Before her death in 2004, Susan Sontag became known as one of the most influential writers and
intellectuals of her era.

She defined
camp as an aesthetic style and took “low” culture as seriously as “high” culture.

The Builders Association, an avant-garde theatrical troupe based in New York, pays tribute to
the young Sontag in
Sontag: Reborn, set for a Thursday opening at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

The presentation of the play coincides with a continuing exhibit of photographs — through Dec. 3
— by Sontag partner Annie Leibovitz.

In the one-woman work, Moe Angelos portrays Sontag.

“She had quite a mind,” Angelos said. “Sontag’s very strong will and drive to construct herself
as a public intellectual from a very young age is quite astonishing — and quite beautiful.”

The play was adapted verbatim from the first volume of her journals, written between 1947 and ’6
3 — and spanning her life from age 14 to age 29 as a student, a wife, a mother, an awakening
lesbian and an aspiring writer.

“It’s a story about a woman or anyone struggling to become who they should be,” director
Marianne Weems said.“Sontag wanted desperately to be a writer and public figure, and that drives
her through the journal. Everyone can relate to that difficult struggle.”

The 65-minute one-act is structured to contrast the younger Sontag with Sontag in her 50s — at
the peak of her fame and power as a provocative essayist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker and
political activist.

“To be so self-absorbed and then to be able to comment on your younger self is the dynamic of
the show,” Weems said. “We focus on the moments just before her first books came out and she became
a populist intellectual superstar. She grew up from this insanely young, very precocious girl . . .
to becoming Susan Sontag.”

Billed as a world premiere in Columbus, the piece was tested as a work in progress early this
year as part of the Under the Radar festival at the Public Theater in New York.

Charles Isherwood, a
New York Times critic, hailed the show as a “touching, exquisitely rendered portrait of
the artist (and thinker) in the process of self-creation.”

Angelos plays the young Sontag live and the older Sontag on prerecorded video.

“Pacing is a challenge in
Sontag: Reborn,” Angelos said, “because I’m also playing against the image of Sontag
elder, we’ll call her, on a continuously running track.”

Sontag, who died at 71, is best-known for her wide-ranging essays on art, culture and
politics.

Notes on Camp, published in 1964, ranks among her most influential essays.

The Builders Association visited the center last fall with
House / Divided, an exploration of the housing crisis; in 2005 with
Super Vision, a multimedia one-act about the threat of surveillance technology; and in
2003 with
Alladeen, another multimedia one-act about the fantasies and technology of modern life
from America to India.

“This show is much more contained, more of a single-line narrative, than our others,” Weems
said. “For once, we could make a chamber piece instead of the symphony that we usually do.